Tag Archives for Scheherazade

This past March I was happy to find a blog by a writer named Cathryn Wellner, who had set out to find 1001 reasons to be hopeful. I quickly got addicted to her daily discoveries of people who left her with optimism about humanity, and I wrote about her here. The problem was that she had decided to find exactly 1001 reasons to be hopeful and she was at number 973 and going. Why hadn’t I stumbled upon this lady sooner? She picked the number 1001 because “that’s how many nights it took Scheherazade to soften the heart of the king” but it meant that I only had 28 more doses of hope coming to my inbox.

Day 1001 brought a nice surprise. Her uplifting event of the day was how many people had written her and asked her to please keep going. She admitted that the daily schedule was hard to meet but she would now publish a weekly dollop of hope. True to her word, reason 1006 — a wonderful story of a elderly woman who refused to sell her house to developers in Seattle and ultimately became friends with them — is in my inbox right next to reason 1005 — the story of a man traveling the world with a piano in the back of his pick-up truck. I’ve kept both stories there because I particularly like them and wanted to reread them once or twice before I recycled the electrons. Her ongoing compilation is called “This Gives Me Hope” and it will have you laughing, crying and feeling better about life on this planet. I promise.

I like the poster above, shared by the Facebook page of Foundation for A Better Life and I don’t dispute what it says. However, it is easier to find that sunshine to bring when you take in a weekly dose of hope.

Like this:

I’ve been reading a lot of other people’s blogs lately, thinking that it’s good to look up once in awhile and see what is going on around you. Amidst the silly, the funny and the introspective, one finds the occasional post that just tears at the heart. I reposted one such story yesterday on my x0 blog. It was about the children of Syria and the atrocities so many of them have been forced to endure.

We can’t fix much as individuals, but we also shouldn’t run away from the knowledge that something needs fixing. I think that it is important to confront the the pain in this world, and to use the information as a call to whatever action we can take.

On the other hand, it can be easy to loose sight of the fact that there is much that is good in the world. It is even less common, I think, to find the blog that fills one with optimism. Luckily I have stumbled on a great one. A writer named Cathryn Wellner has set out to find 1001 reasons to be optimistic and as of today she is at number 973 and going. She picked the number 1001 because “that’s how many nights it took Scheherazade to soften the heart of the king” and she invites readers to share their own stories of people, places, photographs, and events that have given them hope. Her compilation is called “This Gives Me Hope” and it will have you laughing, crying and feeling better about life on this planet. I promise. You can check out her Facebook page too.

While you’re on Facebook, drop by the Hippie Peace Freaks page and give them a like for the great image shown above. They are another bright spot.

What about the fact that there are folks out there posting such positive messages? This gives me hope, too.